Shapeways has thirteen models of (the most symmetrical and famous form of) C60, but none of the thousands of smaller fullerenes. So I designed models of the 35 smallest, i.e. up to C36; this includes the smallest with no symmetries, and the smallest with no ‘peaks’ where three pentagons meet. One bundle has the 19 forms with mirror symmetry; two other bundles will have the 16 or 32 chiral forms (arbitrarily divided), so that the buyer can choose to have both or only one of a pair distinguished only by handedness.

I’ll make them available when I have them in my hands and am satisfied of their strength.

A new father asked:

Are you charmed or annoyed to learn that your 3d geometric object is making a great toy for [baby, 8 mo.]?

I replied:

I have cats, so I’m not a bit surprised!

On a related note, if I had any knowledge of Web programming I’d make something analogous to this.

This one is a projection of a design on (half of) the surface of a hypersphere: a ribbon spans two orthogonal great circles, wrapping three times around one and five times around the other.

Kitty teeth did break it at one point, but with redundancy that’s not a serious problem. Having got my pix I’ll keep the new toys away from them henceforth.

Not only did it not fall apart in my hands …

The strand — for it is a Klein bottle woven of a single strand — is thinner than I expected, and has broken in at least two places. Ah well, live and learn; I’ve already redesigned it to be more robust.

I submitted a design to Shapeways today! I’ll tell you more if it doesn’t fall apart when I get it in my hands.

Someone in Massachusetts bought one of my cups! A first!